


What To Hold On To

by 94BottlesOfSnapple



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-15 22:26:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3464321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/94BottlesOfSnapple/pseuds/94BottlesOfSnapple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. ... Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. Because they were holding onto something."</p>
<p>When he walked back in his round door in the year T.A. 2941, and for every day after, what was Bilbo Baggins holding onto?</p>
            </blockquote>





	What To Hold On To

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I'm awful, I know. But I needed an outlet for my canon-related angst, because sticking your head in the sand and writing Everyone Lives AUs only does the trick sometimes.

The first day back, with a quarter of his furniture at the front door and the other three spread throughout the entirety of Hobbiton, if not the whole Shire, it's all Bilbo can do to straighten his mother and father's portraits above the fireplace and pick up his long-abandoned handkerchief before he curls up in his cloak in front of the empty hearth and sobs.

 

It takes him three days to recover his bed, but he doesn't sleep in it even once it's back. Instead, he sits in his armchair before the fireplace, knees tucked under his chin like a faunt, and prays for the barest echo of a deep baritone rumble singing about long forgotten gold.

 

It is thirteen days before he can pull the acorn from his pocket without trembling. He can't bring himself to plant it, because whatever was growing in his heart when he picked it up in Beorn's garden has withered soundly. He takes to keeping his little golden ring in his waistcoat pockets instead, because the aching loss seems a little less sharp when he idly strokes its band.

 

It takes him nigh on three weeks to reassemble his mother's far-scattered dish set. But when he goes to set one of the blue and white plates out to eat, he can hear the teasing chants of two young Dwarf princes and blanks in shock. When he comes to his senses, he's shattered the plate against the wall quite soundly, and his hands are still trembling. They dive for his waistcoat pocket and the ring, even though all he really wants is the acorn.

 

It's been a month and a half before Bilbo has his door repainted. He pays the young Gamgee lad apprenticing with his gardener Holman Greenhand ten silver pennies to brighten it up, and supplies the paint and brush. The boy approaches him about the mark carved into the door, and Bilbo pays him an extra two pennies to go over that spot until the mark can no longer be seen.

 

It is a full two months before he goes down to market with a polite, dry face and purchases a red leather journal. He knows, has always known because he is a scholar and a storyteller, that he will write down his tale. But he is not yet ready. He slips Ori's sketch of him into the front cover and hides it away.

 

It's an entire year before Bilbo has finally recovered all of his auctioned possessions. Only then does he begin to invite people to tea again, though many are too put-off by him to come. He finds he doesn't particularly mind.

 

It is five years when Balin and Gandalf join him for tea. Bilbo has practiced saying the name Thorin Oakenshield in front of a mirror until it is meaningless and the o's don't catch his mouth and hook it into a sob. He wishes the old Dwarf the best of luck in Moria, and means "Maker of the Dwarves protect him, and let all those left in my Company die peacefully of old age".

 

It has been eight years when Bilbo finds himself humming the song about destroying his dishes and finds that the ditty is no longer so cutting, even though he can still hear the harmonizing of the Company's voices and the laughter of Thorin's nephews echo in the background as he bakes to the tune.

 

It is twenty long years when Lobelia Sackville-Baggins starts to grumble about how "well-preserved" Bilbo is. He understands what she sees, but also knows she's shallow and foolish and does not see the stretch of time in his eyes that would tell anyone looking that he's quite more aged than the mirror would suggest.

 

It is thirty years, give or take, when Bilbo Baggins looks into a pair of the bluest eyes he has ever seen on a fauntling before. He takes one look at young Frodo, so small and dark amongst his rowdier Brandybuck cousins, and cannot look away. People say all sorts of things, as people are wont to do, but whatever the truth, Bilbo finds himself with a small ward, learning to be a parent at the age of eighty and never quite sure if he's succeeding.

 

It is thirty-two years when Frodo, in his curiosity, opens the small trunk containing Sting, the parting gifts from the Company, and the empty red leather journal. Bilbo barks at him at first, face tensed in an expression that speaks of wounded anger. But seeing the lad's eyes begin to fill with tears, he ruffles those dark curls and softens his tone and tries to let go of a little of his secret pain. He tells Frodo stories about trolls and riddles and barrels and a monstrous dragon, and does not tell him stories about acorns and long embraces and gold-sick whispers and dimming sapphire eyes.

These first become so simple to tell that eventually he tells the lad's young playmates, and soon it's almost easier to narrate these half-truths than to keep everything to himself. He tells the trolls a little bigger, and doubtless the Company braver and stronger and more foolhardy, and Bard's shot with the Black Arrow as though he'd been there to see it himself. It's closer to a lie than a truth to minimize the loss and the pain and the love, both won and lost, but Gandalf told him the best tales deserve a little embellishment and he agrees.

It warms his chest when he sees Frodo battling air with a stick and telling the other Hobbit children that he's Thorin Oakenshield and he's going to lead them back to "our mountain". It also makes the walls of his well-compartmentalized little life crack sharply, like three precise raps on the front door.

 

It is forty years when Bilbo wakes to realize that his heart is starting to mend. Frodo is a tween, sweet and playful and endlessly sassing his uncle, much to Bilbo's unfortunately undisguised delight. Though sometimes when the pain is too great he indulges in stroking the band of his little ring, more often he will dig out his mithril shirt and press the cool links to his face. It is a fine spring morning when he pulls the acorn from its box on the mantle and finally plants it with the rough abandon of a Hobbit possessed. He expects nothing will grow from it, because he's waited so long, but like magic a little oak sapling sprouts.

 

It is sixty long years before Bilbo can open up the red leather journal and begin an unabridged tale that starts with the words "in a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit" with a steady hand and a chuckle. He titles it "There and Back Again" to remind himself that he has come back, and he has lived. Really lived. Every muddy Hobbit footprint on his carpets, every night by the fire where Frodo demanded riddles instead of lullabies, every shared birthday party, every bright laugh that has echoed in Bag End in the last thirty-odd years. There is a wandering thrum in his heart again, but he knows he will have left very much of himself here in Bag End with Frodo.

That night he starts out Eastward again, leaving his books and armchair and the tree he has watched miraculously grow for twenty years, and bringing only Sting and his partially-completed journal, wearing silver steel beneath his shirt and wasitcoat, close to his beating heart where even Gandalf can't see. The last thing he leaves behind is the ring, tipping it regretfully onto the floor as he steps into the night, but feeling so light afterwards that he goes on his way with a song and tells Gandalf that the end of the book will be "and he lived happily ever after, to the end of his days", firmly believing it.

 

It has been sixty-five years when he finishes his tale at last, the manuscript interspersed with depictions and sketches not nearly as masterful as Ori's, and submits it to Lord Elrond's exacting eye. When it is returned a week later, on a balcony overlooking the entire valley of Imladris, the Elf lord describes it as "a beautiful romance". Bilbo snorts at that, but there is no commiserating laughter. As the silence stretches, the old Hobbit finds himself afraid to look up into his friend and host's ageless eyes, but at last rallies the strength. Elrond just stares down at him with an understanding, knowing gaze and a sad smile. When the Elf squeezes his shoulder gently, hot long-held-back tears slip down Bilbo's face.

 

It is seventy-seven years when Bilbo gives up all he has left besides his completed manuscript and his fading memories to make sure his nephew will be safe on his long journey. He feels like maybe he ought to apologize to Thorin for giving his precious gift away and breaking his promise to keep it always. But then he considers how well Thorin knew the pain and fear of losing one's nephews, of needing to do everything to protect them, and he urges Frodo to put on the mithril immediately, a giddy and fearful feeling thrumming in his heart.

When the glint of his old ring drives him to rage, he turns and sobs and shudders because he remembers dragon-words like the kind he has just spewed and thinks to himself that he is a hypocritical old fool. Frodo's eyes are still soft and concerned, even if they are steeped in fear, and it makes Bilbo's shame all the greater.

 

It is seventy-eight years or so when his nephew and his mithril and his sword are returned to him, but he finds with a sad sort of inevitability that none of them are really his anymore. The red journal isn't either, and Bilbo gives that last piece of himself away because he knows Frodo has a story he must write and a tremulous loss that can't be explained except to blank pages.

 

It has been eighty very long years when Bilbo Baggins smiles up at three Elves, a wizard, and his beloved dark-haired blue-eyed nephew and hobbles onto a boat sailing West.

 

But in all those years, Bilbo Baggins has never once stopped waking from dreams about sapphire blue eyes and a slow, fond, beautiful smile with a heart-stopping flash of white teeth.


End file.
